Chapter 10

I didn't go to Adrian that night.

Not because I didn't want to — I had enough to bring him, the lab photographs alone would have justified walking down that corridor at midnight. But there was something deliberate about waiting. Something I'd learned from three years of pharmaceutical documentation, where the instinct was always to file the report immediately, and where the better move was almost always to sit with the information until you understood its full shape.

What I had was pieces.

Reeves in the lab at night, removing something from Eleanor's storage unit. Mara gone, room cleaned, the kind of clean that required advance preparation. An anonymous contact who'd used my name for the first time like a door opening a fraction wider.

What I didn't have was the connective tissue. The reason Reeves had moved tonight specifically. The reason Mara had been removed tonight specifically. Whether those two things were related or coincidental, and in a house like this, coincidence felt like a luxury I couldn't afford.

I sat on the floor with my back against the bed until two in the morning.

Then I heard it.

---

Voices. Not from the corridor — from below. From somewhere in the estate's bones, traveling up through the old stone the way sound does in buildings that predate insulation, where the architecture itself becomes a conductor.

Two voices. One I recognized. One I didn't.

I moved to the floor vent — the old kind, cast iron, decorative, the sort that gets painted over in renovations but not sealed because nobody thinks about them — and pressed my ear to the grate.

Harlan. His voice, that measured document-texture, carrying up through the stone with the particular clarity of a man accustomed to speaking precisely.

"— timeline has moved. Reeves confirmed the extraction tonight."

A second voice. Male. Not Crane — I didn't know Crane's voice yet, but this one was younger, a specific register of cultivated authority that belonged to someone who'd been in professional rooms long enough to absorb their acoustics. "Eleanor authorized it?"

"The authorization was existing. Reeves acted on standing instruction."

"That's not what I asked."

A pause. "Eleanor was informed after."

Something shifted in the second voice. A quality I couldn't name precisely — not anger, something more contained. "She's moving without coordinating. That's the third time."

"She believes the timeline requires it."

"Eleanor believes whatever justifies Eleanor." The voice dropped slightly. The kind of drop that happens when someone stops performing composure and briefly means what they say. "If Reeves extracted the sample tonight it's because someone accessed the lab. Someone tipped the system."

Silence from Harlan.

"Was it the Voss girl?"

My breathing went very shallow.

Harlan's answer, when it came, was careful in the specific way that meant he was choosing what to confirm rather than what to deny. "There was movement in the east corridor this evening."

"Does she know what she found?"

"She found the binders. Reeves confirmed they'd been disturbed."

"And the sample unit?"

"Locked. She wouldn't have seen the authorization label unless—" A pause. "Unless she looked specifically."

"She looked specifically." The second voice had something in it that wasn't quite admiration and wasn't quite threat. "She's better than Crane expected."

"Crane underestimated the selection."

"Crane underestimates everything that doesn't have a monetary value." A brief sound — a chair, maybe, someone shifting. "She can't be removed. Not now. It'll signal that something's been found."

"Agreed."

"Keep her close. Let her think she's ahead." The voice paused. "And find out who's been sending her the messages. Someone inside this house is feeding her information and it isn't Reeves."

The voices dropped further, moved away, the stone stopping carrying them.

I stayed at the vent with my cheek against the floor and my heart doing that mechanical thing again, the thing that wasn't quite fear and wasn't quite calm.

*Let her think she's ahead.*

The anonymous contact. The perfectly timed warnings. The messages that had guided me to the lab, to the medication log, to exactly the right places at exactly the right moments.

I sat up slowly.

What if the anonymous contact wasn't helping me?

What if they were directing me?

---

I was outside Adrian's door before I'd fully decided to go there. The security personnel had apparently been given updated instructions — they stepped aside without my having to say anything, which was new.

Adrian was awake. He was always awake, I was starting to understand. The pretense of sleep was something he performed for certain audiences, and I had apparently been moved off that list.

He looked at me when I came in — at my face specifically, reading it with the same efficient attention he brought to everything — and said: "Sit down."

"I'm fine standing."

"You've been on a floor," he said. "Your right knee. Dust."

I looked down. Looked back up. Sat.

I told him everything. The lab. Reeves. The storage unit, Eleanor's authorization, the binder out of order. Mara's room emptied. The voices through the vent, Harlan's voice among them.

That last part landed differently than the others.

Something in Adrian's face went very still — not the controlled stillness, something underneath it. The stillness of a person recalibrating something they'd thought was certain.

"Harlan," he said.

"He wasn't — I don't think he's working against you directly. The conversation felt more like he was navigating between positions than advocating for one." I paused. "But he's not fully yours either."

Adrian looked at the window. At the dark grounds beyond it. "My father trusted him completely."

"I know."

"He's been with the family for thirty years."

"I know." I let that sit. "The other voice said something else. They know someone inside the house is sending me messages. They want to find out who."

"The anonymous contact."

"Yes." I looked at him. "Adrian. What if the contact isn't an ally? What if someone is using me to locate things they want found? The lab, the medication log — what if I've been guided to those things specifically because someone wants them surfaced for their own reasons?"

He was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that meant he was already three steps into something.

"Then we need to know who benefits from what you've found," he said.

"Reeves took something from Eleanor's unit tonight. If Eleanor didn't authorize tonight's extraction—"

"Then Reeves is operating independently." His voice had a new edge. "Which means Eleanor has a problem."

"And someone is using me to create it."

We looked at each other across the room.

The anonymous contact had used my name for the first time tonight. Like a key turning.

*Be careful, Nora.*

The warning had felt like protection.

Now I wasn't sure what it felt like.